danto zen

Post #127 • October 14, 2003, 3:49 AM

Tacked on to the end of an unrelated article about author Danielle Steel opening an art gallery in San Francisco was this:

Danto at Arion Press: Arthur Danto, art critic for the Nation, will lectureat the Grabhorn Institute, 1802 Hays St. in the Presidio at 6 p.m. Thursday.Tickets and information: (415) 561-2548, or e-mail grabhorn@arionpress.com.

Titled “Upper West Side Buddhism,” Danto’s talk will recount his contactwith the Zen Buddhist teacher D.T. Suzuki, who sparked many postwar Americanartists’ interest in Zen.

Danto will connect Buddhist thought with his own recognition of AndyWarhol’s early sculpture as a turning point in the meaning of “art.” Professoremeritus of philosophy at Columbia University, Danto encountered Suzuki there at the beginning of his teaching career.

Regular readers will understand my interest in this talk, which to my knowledge has not been transcribed to the web. I contacted the Grabhorn, whose Andrew Hoyem tells me that “it will appear in a book on Buddhism and art edited by Jacqueline Baas to be published next year by the University of California Press.” But on the off chance that an Artblog.net reader got to see the talk, or if someone finds something on the web, I’d like to hear about it.